NBC-TV in L.A. counteracts fake news!

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2019

New York Times gives Harris a pass:
A funny thing happened when Candidate Harris offered her gender pay gap proposal. For background, see Tuesday's report.

NBC4 in Los Angeles offered some very limited push-back against the candidate's statistical claims. The station's slightly uncertain push-back went exactly like this:
NBC4, via CITY NEWS SERVICE (5/19/19): The gender pay gap is the ratio of female-to-male median or average yearly earnings. Liberals customarily attribute it to discrimination. Conservatives have cited such factors as men being more likely to work more hours and marriage and motherhood resulting in lower earnings for women.

"Once we start controlling individually for the many relevant factors that affect earnings, e.g. hours worked, age, marital status and having children, most of the raw earnings differential disappears," Mark J. Perry, a scholar at Washington-based think tank the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan-Flint wrote on AEI's economics blog, Carpe Diem.
The following night, Harris appeared on MSNBC's The Beat with Ari Melber and made a series of familiar yet bogus statistical claims (for transcript, see Tuesday's report). Via City News Service, NBC4 had offered some limited push-back the night before.

In truth, the push-back was very limited. That text suggests that it's only conservatives who dispute the statistical claims Harris offered.

In fact, specialists of all persuasions agree with the claims attributed to Perry. Specialists of all persuasions agree that "once we start controlling for the many relevant factors that affect earnings [including] hours worked...most of the raw earnings differential disappears."

Including "hours worked?" Can that really be what he said?

It was interesting to see NBC4 offer this limited bit of push-back because very few others have done so. Note the way the New York Times kept its readers from understanding what they were being told:
HERNDON (5/21/19): The most recent studies on the gender pay gap, which are not based on analogous work, show that women who work full time make 80 cents for every dollar paid to men, adding up to more than $400,000 in missed wages over the course of a woman’s career. The numbers are even worse for women who are also racial minorities—about $1 million in missed wages over a career for Latinas, Native American women and black women, according to an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center.
We've highlighted the slippery term the Times used to disguise what was being said. The term was employed by a slippery young reporter, Astead Herndon. Or who knows? Maybe Herndon's unnamed editor reshaped the reporter's work!

"Not based on analogous work!" That's the murky term the New York Times used to keep its readers from understanding what they were being told. We used to be embarrassed to see our liberal team playing this way. By now, we've come to see that this is simply the way our human race functions, especially at end-times like these.

"Not based on analogous work!" In the next day or two, we'll note the types of considerations that wonderfully murky term hides. Keep "hours worked" in mind!

Sometimes, though, a certain highly disordered man has a bit of truth on his side when he thoughtfully rails about the demon he calls "fake news."

65 comments:

  1. “Liberals customarily attribute it to discrimination.”
    It should be noted that Kamala Harris never once used the word “discrimination.”

    “Conservatives have cited such factors as men being more likely to work more hours and marriage and motherhood resulting in lower earnings for women.”

    “Rational human beings” would like to ask conservatives why “marriage” and “motherhood” should almost universally lower women’s earnings, but “marriage” and “fatherhood” shouldn’t similarly affect men’s earnings.

    "once we start controlling for the many relevant factors that affect earnings [including] hours worked...most of the raw earnings differential disappears."

    Of course. We divide full-time working women’s median income by full-time working men’s median income to arrive at 80%*, but somehow we have to keep adding conditions whereby the figure magically approaches zero. Problem solved: there is no problem.

    Here is a thought experiment: what if all those home-based, and/or part-time working married women suddenly lost their husbands? They would be earning far less than the man if were to lose his wife in that situation.

    *From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

    https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2017/home.htm

    “Highlights of women's earnings in 2017

    In 2017, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings that were 82 percent of those of male full-time wage and salary workers.”

    Note that both figures are for FULL TIME workers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why do you expect the medians to be equal?

      Just because two people work full time, does not mean their pay is equal. Here are two full time workers. One is a HS principal, the other is a stock boy at a grocery store. Should their pay be equal?

      Of course not.

      Here are two full time workers with the same job. They are both math teachers. One has twenty years of experience and the other is just starting.

      Is their pay the same? Why not, they are doing the same job. Is their pay difference due to discrimination?

      Other pairs.
      Store manager at Wal-mart, store manager at Home Depot.
      Store manager at Wal-mart in Baraboo (population 8,000), store manager at Wal-mart in Madison (population 200,000+).

      There are scores of reasons for two full time workers to get different pay, even if they have a) the same job or b) the same job at the same company. Reasons that have nothing to do with discrimination.

      And yet you expect the median to somehow magically control for all those variables and cry foul when the medians are not equal. Even though your own link there shows a huge gap in median earnings between women. Look, women 35 to 44 are making (on average) almost $100 a week more than women over 65! Age discrimination!!!

      Delete
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  2. Whoa, great post, nothing to add. Well done, Bob.

    As always, thank you for documenting zombie cult atrocities.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
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  3. 1. Somerby has disappeared the fact that once you control for other factors, there is a still a gap remaining between men's and women's salaries that is attributed to discrimination against women.
    2. The "analogous work" Somerby refers to is frequently not available to women, which is part of the discrimination against them.
    3. Somerby focuses exclusively on this particular statistic and uses it to suggest that claims of employment discrimination are a con. There are other statistics that he could have cited, studies that demonstrate that women are indeed discriminated against in the workplace.
    4. The factors used by conservatives to explain the pay gap are examples of discrimination against women, not alternative explanations. For example, women who are hourly workers may want schedules that enable them to increase their pay by working more, but those hours may be given to male workers instead, which may be discriminatory. Women may be laid off or not hired because they have children, despite their need for work.
    Other factors not mentioned by conservatives include discrimination in promotion, training, access to opportunities that might lead to promotion (challenging projects, mentoring, visibility of contributions). Women are accused of negotiating lower starting pay, but employers are complicit in gas-lighting female employees who ask for more money, whereas men are more likely to get what they demand. Women may be stereotyped as trouble-makers if they are assertive or suggest changes. Unwillingness to put women in charge of work groups because of concerns about male subordinates feelings prevents women from getting supervisory experience. These things are "factors" too, and the result is discrimination and it leads to lower pay.
    And no one has mentioned sexual harassment. Conservatives think this should go with the territory and women should just deal with it. But experiencing this kind of treatment routinely in the workplace limits what women can do and thereby their pay. A woman who travels with male coworkers will be propositioned. She needs to avoid drinking with customers and the guys after work (when work conversations happen) and she cannot share a room with a male coworker, which increases expenses. If she doesn't get sent on business trips, she cannot participate fully in her job and will have difficulty taking on responsibility and getting promoted. Male sexual attention creates the impession that a woman is being shown favoritism for sexual reasons. That undermines her attempts to demonstrate competence because any good thing she earns will not be attributed to ability. Obviously, if a woman is too assertive in saying no to advance or telling guys to knock-it-off, she will be fired or punished on the job, disliked and even sabotaged in her work efforts. That is a threat that women will quit over. Quitting jobs without first finding another one leads to lower pay. And so on.
    These realities never occur to Somerby. He just thinks women are running a con and the media is going along with them because they don't want to be called sexist. Conservatives think women should be harassed until they return to full-time wife duties in the home and don't compete with men or annoy employers with their demands for change. Somerby seems to have adopted the conservative position on this and forgot to let everyone know he is no longer a liberal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @4:05 wrote: once you control for other factors, there is a still a gap remaining between men's and women's salaries that is attributed to discrimination against women.

      Not quite. It shows there is still a gap remaining that is attributed to all the other factors that were not controlled. Discrimination is only one such factor.

      Delete
    2. "Somerby has disappeared the fact that once you control for other factors, there is a still a gap remaining between men's and women's salaries that is attributed to discrimination against women."

      This is not relevant to the point of the analysis which is Harris missstating and misinforming her potential constituents and the media improperly or not at all correcting her.

      Delete
    3. "Discrimination is only one such factor."

      Meh. If it's a factor, it most likely works in the opposite direction. Because:
      1. Discrimination is illegal.
      2. It's naturally expected that ladies will be complaining about 'discrimination', not gents.
      3. No one wants to deal with a lawsuit.

      Consequently, common sense (as well as experience and anecdotal evidence) suggest that a typical employer will bend over backwards to avoid even an appearance of discrimination.

      Whatever discrimination is there, it swings the other way. No doubt about it.

      Delete
    4. Large companies maybe, but not small ones.

      Delete
    5. Well, if Mao's gas-lighting about it, that settles it.
      LOL.

      Delete
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  4. “Liberals customarily attribute it to discrimination.”

    And liberals “customarily” attributed the low number of blacks who voted in the pre-1964 South to discrimination, when conservatives know it was just that blacks couldn’t meet the totally unbiased requirements for voting, like literacy tests or high poll taxes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Remember when corrupt Obama ran for Congress and had poor black voters' votes for his opponents that were signed in printing instead of longhand thrown out so he could eliminate all his opponents favored by poor blacks and run unopposed? Good times.

      Delete
    2. No, I don’t remember that.

      Obama’s only run for Congress was for the Senate. None of his opponents got “thrown out.”

      You may be thinking of Obama’s run for Illinois Senate, but he didn’t challenge any signatures for votes for his opponents. (All elections in Illinois are by secret ballot; there are no signatures associated with votes.) In that election, Obama didn’t run unopposed — Obama ran as a Democrat, and there was a Republican and a member of the Harold Washington Party in the race.

      Perhaps you’re thinking of the Democratic primary for that Illinois Senate seat, but Obama didn’t challenge votes; he challenged signatures to nominating petitions.

      Here’s what happened. US Representative Mel Reynolds was convicted of sex crimes in August 1995 and resigned his seat. Alice Palmer, an Illinois state senator, announced in September that she would run in the primary for the special election to replace Reynolds and that she wouldn’t run for her seat in the state senate in 1996. Instead, she endorsed Obama to replace her.

      In November, Palmer placed third in the primary that Jesse Jackson, Jr. won, and then reneged on her promise not to seek re-election to the state senate. That left her about three weeks before the December deadline to gather the 750 or so signatures on her nominating petitions. She submitted about twice that number.

      TV channel 5 reported:

      The day after Palmer filed her petitions, one of Obama’s supporters, 5th Ward Committeeman Alan Dobry, went down to the Board of Elections and began paging through them. Right away, he found errors that suggested a hurried, slapdash effort. He saw names like “Goo Goo” and “Pookie.” One sheet was filled with signatures from an adjacent district. On some petitions, entire households had signed, even though not everyone at the address was registered to vote.

      As the law permitted, Obama challenged enough signatures to leave Palmer (and the other primary hopefuls) short of the required number. The Board of Elections made the decisions, and none of their members was beholden to Obama: this was his first race for office.

      Now, why don’t you piss off.

      Delete
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      All my results happens with in 24 hours, Am called Traditional healer/ spiritual healer/ Sangoma baba Messe and i specialize mainly in amagundwane/spiritual rats together with my great fathers and i perform the ritual which is a mixture of magic and muthi.“A person must state how much he wants. You can state R.500,000 to R.10 millions – the rats will deliver it for you wherever you are! No one sees them because it’s magic,” I Baba Messe from Gauteng i can assure you that this is the only legit way rats can make you rich.
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      If you're not completely satisfied we'll refund your money, period, no questions asked,”
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  5. Here is how this works:

    1. Hire a woman but put her in a position that pays less than men. Give it a different job title and put her desk in a closet so she is not a distraction to the men.

    2. When auditors come, explain that her job has different content than the men's jobs.

    3. When she asks to be "promoted" to the men's job, tell her a story (no openings, not permitted by the union, requires a qualification she doesn't have, no money in the budget to pay her for it, she wouldn't like it because the guys can be a bit rough, etc.). Tell her she is indispensable in her current role but sadly there is no money for a raise. Add some duties to her job and tell her you are "preparing" her to move up, but don't change her pay.

    4. When she insists she needs more money and tells you she hasn't had a raise in three years, tell her the budget is tight and you may have to cut back on staff and this isn't the right time to ask. Then criticize some aspect of her work and ask her to improve.

    5. Ask her to train the interns so that they can start in the men's job after they graduate. If she comes to you and shows you her diploma in a relevant area of study, tell her that she is over-qualified and wouldn't like the work.

    6. When she retires after several decades on the job, give her a nice cake and tell her you don't know what you'll do without her. Then assign her duties to the other woman in the office, without increasing her pay. Tell her how talented she is and how important her efforts are now that her coworker is leaving.

    7. One of the men might ask the women in the office to do some of his work for him. Discourage this. You wouldn't want the women to catch on that they can do men's work. If any of the women complain about this, point out that they may be doing the men's work but they don't have the responsibility, the stress and worries that the men carry. Tell them they are lucky their own jobs are not stressful.

    You get the picture? Nunbers cannot fully capture this shit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why doesn't "she" see an employment lawyer and sue them?

      Delete
    2. Yes, there are scores of employment lawyers that would be chomping at the bit to take her case on spec and sue the living shit out of that company.

      Delete
    3. Put yourself into the place of a low wage worker. You would have to take time off work to go see a lawyer. You might not know that the first interview an attorney is typically free, so you might wonder how much it will cost beyond missing work. You might not know how to find an "employment" lawyer or even that there is such a specialty. You may not realize that you have grounds to sue. Then it would take quite a while, dragged out by the company in order to increase the costs perhaps, and in the meantime, what do you do for work? Stay there? That's not an option, so it would require a job change. Many people will not quit a job and many find looking for new work daunting. Yes, you have to do that to improve your life, but many people won't unless forced to it.

      So this suggestion is easy to say but hard to do. I don't know anyone personally who has ever sued an employer (except myself and that was a class action that I became part of after the EEOC released my claim to an attorney). EEOC doesn't do anything much but filing with them was a matter of principle.

      Then there is the stigma of having filed such a suit. If prospective employers (for the rest of your life) find out you were involved in such a suit, then you will have a very hard time finding new work.

      Delete
    4. The apparatus exists for the protagonist of this fictional scenario to her to help herself. What do you want? Superman to come in and save her? The laws and threat of a lawsuit also prevent employers from treating women as described here. No one gives a shit about you or who you personally know. That is irrelevant. You have emotional issues and emotional needs that are unfulfilled. This is making you invent problems in order to provide yourself with an excuse to make a fuss. Shut up and work harder. Do a good job and no one will discriminate against you, quite the opposite, you or the fictional protagonist will be rolling in bucks. The broad here should quit. It's hard but LIFE is hard. Duh.

      Delete
    5. Enforcement of laws is a good start. That is what Kamala Harris is proposing.

      Hillary worked very hard and did a good job at everything she was hired to do. Did it help her in 2016?

      If you quit one shitty job, the next one will be more of the same unless you make it unprofitable for businesses to exploit women workers. Men had to form unions to protect them, but those unions don't want to do the same for women and many of the jobs women work at don't have unions. That would be where I would start, but that is a difficult process too.

      You don't like my stories, but they are every woman's story. Women will resonate to them. Men who don't pay attention will be sorry in 2020. Because women vote. Increasingly, they are not voting with their husbands but are voting their own interests. If they push this abortion issue Republicans are going to need another Russia bail out. Bad for the country.

      Delete
    6. @7:32 I don't think Hillary did a good job as Secretary of State. It's hard to point to positive achievements. OTOH Benghazi was a f*ckup. The overthrow of Khadafy was a disaster in several ways. It destroyed Libya's stability, because there seemed to be no plan for after Khadafy. And, it violated a promise made by the US when we persuaded Khadafy to give up his nuclear program.

      Delete
    7. The country believed she did a good job. Her approval rating was sky high when she left her Secretary of State job and she was voted Woman of the Year again (over Michelle Obama and Oprah). You don't like what she did for political reasons. She executed Obama's policies -- you can blame him for that stuff.

      Delete
    8. Benghazi is a story about Republicans putting party before country (ho-hum). Pretending the richest country in the history of mankind is flat broke so Obama couldn't help the people during the worst recession in 7 decades is so typical of piece of shit republicans, or what we like to call "Republicans'. Let's face it, Republicans are awful, awful people.

      Delete
    9. @7:35 - Please don't make up my motivation. IMHO Madeleine Albright was a terrific Secretary of State. Hillary deserves credit for recommending her.

      What you wrote is true. Nevertheless, you failed to list a single accomplishment Hillary had as Secretary of State.

      Delete
    10. "What you wrote is true."

      I'm 10:52.

      Delete
    11. David, if you read Hard Choices, Hillary's book about her experiences as Secretary of State, she tells you about what she considers to be her accomplishments. You will find out about things Fox News doesn't talk about.

      Delete
    12. D & C - obviously Libya didn't emerge as a solid democracy after Khadafy was ousted (and killed). The rationale for giving air support to the rebels was that Khadafy was going to swoop down and slaughter tens of thousands if there wasn't intervention (we didn't act alone either, other European countries were on board and participated). Trump at the time supported what was done in Libya. I/m pretty sure if we didn't act as we did, and there was this big slaughter, you and the right wing would be excoriating Clinton for that. (I will acknowledge that the rationale of averting a big massacre might have been ginned up, a la WMDs to some extent). Now we have John Bolton as national security advisor, who still thinks invading Iraq was the right thing - Iraq, perhaps next to Vietnam, was the biggest fiasco ever, and the blame falls squarely on the GOP president Bush - Libya is a pale dot in comparison. Benghazi has been overblown exponentially, as well as being distorted in Goebblesian fashion.

      Delete
    13. "Benghazi has been overblown exponentially"

      US ambassador was killed, among others. Under dubious circumstances.

      Heh. "Overblown exponentially" is a real cute characterization in this 'russiagate' era, after 2.5 years (and still going) of super-massive, endless, non-stop smears and goebbelsian propaganda - based on absolutely nothing.

      Delete
    14. Benghazi was about republicans trying to make Obama a one-term President by making believe the richest country in the world was broke, so Obama's hands were tied and he couldn't help the citizens of the USA during the worst recession in over 7 decades.
      BTW, Republicans continue to accuse Democrats of putting party over country. (see definition of Right-wing accusations vis-a vis confessions).

      Delete
  6. There is a circular argument going on, coming from the conservative side. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

    “In 2017, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings that were 82 percent of those of male full-time wage and salary workers.”

    Conservatives would have to argue that, for full-time workers, A/B = 82% because women’s full-time median income (A) results from women working in lower-paying jobs, else A would equal B. So, the brilliant conservative argument is that A/B = 82% because A is 82% of B.

    The obvious question is: *Why* is A/B = 82%, ie, why are full-time working women paid less? Conservatives have not shown in the slightest that discrimination is not the cause.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "The obvious question is: *Why* is A/B = 82%,"

      Dembot, you may not have heard of it, but there is such a thing as 'traditional gender roles', where Man is a breadwinner, and Woman a homemaker and childrearer, for whom career is not a priority.

      Believe it or not, for most people, men and women, this model is just as natural as for your ilk whining about 'patriarchy'.

      Consequently, A/B = 82% appears to be quite high; in fact, extremely high. Okay?

      Delete
    2. This is the "you're lucky you get to work at all" argument. Men think they own the workplace and women are there under sufferance. This is a microcosm of the men own the world assumption, and women are only there for men's convenience.

      There may be some conservative women who will buy into this, but the majority of women don't believe and will not tolerate it. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. Women died to gain the vote 100 years ago. Women are serious about keeping control over their bodies (which permits them to work if they want) and their lives (no more forced marriage, right to divorce, own property, enjoy sex).

      So, basing your argument about wage inequalities on going back to the patriarchy isn't going to work. Republicans will not roll back all of the laws affecting women because no matter how weird the Supreme Court becomes, it will not be able to decide that women are not human beings again.

      I'll bet you love watching the Handmaid's Tale.

      Delete
    3. " Republicans will not roll back all of the laws affecting women because no matter how weird the Supreme Court becomes, it will not be able to decide that women are not human beings again."

      No, but they'll try. That's because Republicans are awful people. The real question, on this media criticism blog, is why would the media ever listen to what they have to say?

      Delete
    4. "This is the "you're lucky you get to work at all" argument."

      Dembot, puh-leeze. What 'argument'?

      You asked why A/B = 82%, and I explained: because for 100 million women in the country (and probably for about 95% of the women worldwide) career isn't a priority.

      I repeat: career is not a priority. Comprende? What's so complicated here?

      Delete
    5. 4:35 but not 7:51May 24, 2019 at 2:29 AM

      Just to be clear, the 82% figure is for full time working women, not stay-at-home women. In other words, the non-income-earning women are not included here, and these are women working FULL TIME, a sizable portion of whom must clearly view career as a priority, or at least important. And yet they are still paid less.

      Delete
    6. 4:35 but not 7:51,

      Just to be clear, among all women who work full time today there are "a sizable portion" of the total who have spent years of their prime working age lives as stay-at-home wives/significant others, with or without children, as single parents living with government and/or family assistance, and as part-time workers.

      Were you to find a reliable study of the earnings of women who entered the work force as full time workers at the same time in their lives, with the same qualifications, in the same jobs, and remained full time workers for the same number of years as their, matched in these particulars, male counterparts most likely that study would show these women earn much closer to 100% of what these men earn than 82%.

      Instead of the idea that women should earn the same pay a man receives for the same work, you seem to think that, for any hours any woman works at any full-time job at any point in her labor market career, any woman should be earning whatever the average pay is for all men who are employed full time.

      Delete
    7. CMike,
      Women should earn twice as much as men, just for putting up with having to work with them.

      Delete
    8. " a sizable portion of whom must clearly view career as a priority"

      Umm,I don't think so.

      It seems much more likely that for most of them (at least those who are either already married or planning/wishing to be) the main motivation is to have a supplemental source of income, and the safety net in case the husband loses his job.

      Delete
    9. Look at the misogynists creeping in after midnight.

      Women are welfare mothers. They don't care about their jobs. They are working for pin money until Mr. Right comes along. Men aren't working for beer money or to pay for their cars, however. When there are two paychecks in a family, men insist that theirs be the primary one while women's are supplemental. It is as easy to think of the woman's paycheck as primary and the man's as supplemental, if hers is bigger than his, and men don't want to be superfluous, so they rig the system and make sure women get less money. What if men contribution equally to the family, to the household in other important ways, so that there would be no chance of them being unimportant to their kids? What if men were real contributors instead of just paychecks who freeload at home? They wouldn't need to protect their egos by disadvantaging women.

      Delete
    10. "it will not be able to decide that women are not human beings again."

      No but it will recognize that the human beings they produce are human beings as will the rest of society in denial about that fact.

      Delete
    11. What if you shaved your head and walked into your class naked?

      I suppose you could, but you don't. Why? Because the society has traditions, followed by most people.

      Same with the gender roles. No one is disadvantaging anyone; people, men and women, voluntarily follow the patterns they learned from their parents, who learned from their parents, and so on.

      Yes, traditions do change, but they don't change overnight; it takes generations.

      Perhaps 100 years from now, who knows, the woman's paycheck will be primary and the man's supplemental. And then the average men will be paid 82%. And you'll be one very elderly and very happy dembot...

      Delete
    12. Traditionally, Conservatives work for the Elite Establishment. That isn't changing anytime soon.

      Delete
  7. It’s very simple: liberals are not saying, as the bad faith right wing and Bob Somerby would have it, that the discrepancy is *entirely* due to discrimination, or that every individual case is an instance of discrimination. They are saying that gender discrimination, a significant historical fact in our country, still plays a significant role in the earnings discrepancy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think reasonable people would disagree with your last sentence, but that's not what "equal pay for equal work" means. TDH says that slogan is misleading and a loser.

      Deal with that.

      Delete
  8. If Somerby wants to watch an LA station that will support his conservative viewpoints, he should watch CBS News in LA.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think women who work at jobs where they are routinely harassed by men should get hazard pay. Their salaries should be higher than men's and the pay differential should be reversed. It isn't fair that they should have to do the same work as men and also deal with their advances.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They get what's called "big settlements." And men are subjected to unwanted advances by gay men and by women so don't be sexist.

      Delete
    2. It isn't the advances that are the problem. It is that women are not in positions of power and the advances are coming from the people who have power over them. That means the women are not free to refuse those advances without jeopardizing their employment.

      If a woman hits on a man in a workplace environment, it is most likely the man is not her subordinate and thus he can say no without being fired or punished. The woman typically doesn't have that luxury.

      Then there is the dread of going to work, where you spend all day. A woman whose boss is harassing her spends her day avoiding him and worrying about whether he will bother her, so she cannot relax during the day and cannot fully focus on the job.

      Then there is the issue of strength and aggressiveness. Men are typically bigger and stronger than most women, so there is an element of force when a man makes advances, simply because of the man's size and strength. And women may not want to make a fuss in the workplace by screaming or otherwise making a scene. Men use that to their advantage. A man making unwanted advances to another man will worry about being attacked for it. That tends to put a damper on such advances. So a man will, at worst, receive some unreciprocated flirting. But he is unlikely to be cornered or flattened against a wall by another man.

      So, these are not comparable situations, even when a man is receiving unwanted advances.

      But your objection seems very logical to other men, I'm sure.

      Delete
  10. I’m still puzzled why Somerby attacks Kamala Harris but not Bernie Sanders, when he tweeted out the exact same statistics that Harris is using.

    ...

    Just kidding. I’m not really puzzled.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How many tweets have you seen Somerby criticize? After a quick search it looks to me like Somerby only comments on tweets when they're discussed on main stream media platforms like the NY Times, the Washington Post, CNN and once in a Kevin Drum post. Usually the tweet up for discussion is one of Trump's. With regards to the Harris discussion of pay inequity, she made her case on MSNBC, a news source which Somerby follows and comments about frequently.

      But let's say Somerby doesn't like Harris and does like Sanders, so what? Oh, this where you, who must be anti-Semitic, accuse Somerby of being a misogynist.

      Delete
    2. Somerby is a misogynist. It is obvious and the reasons have been pointed out here over a span of many months, every time he writes something misogynistic.

      Delete
    3. You're either a racist or a Democrat. You're either a misogynist or a Democrat. Later rinse repeat. Ho hum. Didn't work last time won't work next time.

      Delete
    4. 10:55,
      It'll work again. This time for Democrats. Remember, people voted for Trump because he "tells it like it is". Why wouldn't that work for Democrats?

      Delete
    5. Because as you said, Trump tells it like it IS. Which is to point out that Democrat party tells it like it ISN'T. Race and gender baiting doesn't work like it used to unless you're trying to elect Republicans or the likes of Trump.

      Delete
    6. 1;32,
      Passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn't work unless you're trying to elect Republicans or the likes of Trump.

      Fixed it for you.

      Delete
  11. It’s difficult to see how today’s new charges leveled against Assange by Trump’s DOJ will be anything but disastrous for Trump.

    Wikileaks, if you’re listening....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
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  12. “Including "hours worked?" Can that really be what he said?”

    We will deal with this supposed “explanation” in Somerby’s next post about the pay gap. For now, suffice it to say that there is a big pile of malarkey being spread by those who wish to explain away the pay gap this way.

    ReplyDelete
  13. There have been stories about Trump's micromanagement of projects as part of his management style, but ulterior motives should be examined in some of these situations, if not all of them. He is apparently using his wall to pay back donors and cronies, as reported by Democratic Underground:

    "President Trump has personally and repeatedly urged the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to award a border wall contract to a North Dakota construction firm whose top executive is a GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News, according to four administration officials.

    In phone calls, White House meetings and conversations aboard Air Force One during the past several months, Trump has aggressively pushed Dickinson, N.D.-based Fisher Industries to Department of Homeland Security leaders and Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the Army Corps, according to the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions. The push for a specific company has alarmed military commanders and DHS officials. "

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In defense of Trump voters, they didn't vote for him because he's a piece of shit grifter, anymore than they voted for him due to the economy. They voted for him because they were turned on by his bigotry.

      Delete
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